Police need a different kind of backup as psychological injuries increase

Paul MacKenzie is only alive because of a mechanical failure. His service revolver misfired, sparing his life and foiling his suicide attempt. He had only been a Halifax police officer for eight years.

“It was like one more thing for me, even a failed suicide attempt. I can’t even do that right, and that’s how I interpreted it.”  

That was in 1984. 

At the time of his suicide attempt, MacKenzie had a three-year-old child and a pregnant wife at home. 

He was suffering from a mix of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder culminating from years of seeing grisly crime scenes, car crashes and suicides. It would be years before he was diagnosed and 33 years later, the retired officer is still trying to cope. 

Paul MacKenzie, 60, retired from the Halifax Regional Police force in 2000 and he’s still dealing with job-related psychological problems. (David Burke/CBC)

Hundreds looking for help

MacKenzie’s not alone with his mental health problems. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of police officers looking for help to heal their mental wounds. 

In the last two years, hundreds of officers have come forward asking for help, according to Badge of Life Canada, a national non-profit group that supports police and corrections officers suffering from psychological injuries. 

Halifax police officers are part of that group, said Supt. Brenda Young with Halifax Regional Police.

“We have seen an increase in the number of psychological injuries in police services, I think that’s happening across the country,” she said.    

Psychological injuries can occur after officers experience some kind of mental trauma while at work, such as witnessing violence and death. (Rob Short/CBC)

But no one is tracking the rates of psychological injuries for police across the country. That makes it hard to know exactly how big a problem those injuries are.       

“It is really difficult to estimate. I think it’s safe to say that it’s a huge problem within first responders overall,” said Louise Bradley, president and CEO of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. 

The commission has been trying to learn more about the mental health of police officers. Bradley said it appears the rates of anxiety and depression are on the rise within police departments but the commission needs more data to be sure.  

“Before you can really tackle a problem you need to know what a problem is. The more information you have got, the better able you are to handle it,” she said.  

Difficult to get numbers

Halifax Regional Police and Nova Scotia RCMP both say it is difficult for management to track who is suffering from psychological injuries because that information doesn’t have to be disclosed to them.

If an officer is put off work by a doctor, there is no obligation for the officer or physician to tell management why that person is off.

There is a whole range of stress facing police officers everyday, from investigating how this vehicle ended up in the Bedford Basin to dealing with dangerous members of the public. (Steve Berry/CBC)

 

Still the regional police do have some handle on which of its 530 or so officers are dealing with mental health injuries. 

“At any given time, we could have three or four — we could have up to 10, it really does depend on what’s going on. Not all of those cases are people that are unable to work but they are cases of people that we are dealing with,” Young said.

She said the police service is hiring a wellness co-ordinator to help create programs to best help officers maintain good mental and physical health. 

Nova Scotia RCMP Supt. Dennis Daley said the health services team within the RCMP monitors the numbers of officers seeking treatment.

The Halifax Regional Police and the RCMP run programs to help officers deal with some of the distressing things they have to deal with at work. (The Canadian Press)

‘Don’t want the public to lose confidence’

MacKenzie believes there are other reasons departments are reluctant to talk about their officers’ mental health condition with outsiders. 

“Not every organization wants to admit that there are issues and a lot of it has got to do with that they don’t want the public to lose confidence in these first responder organizations,” he said.

“Even though we are human beings, we’re exposed to a lot of bad things that a lot of people will never, ever thankfully see in their lives — well, often we could see it several times in the run of a day.”

Things have changed a lot since 60-year-old MacKenzie was struggling in his first few years on the force. 

For the RCMP underwater recovery team, a day’s work can involve hunting for bodies lost in lakes, rivers or the ocean. (David Pate/CBC)

Halifax police now have programs and training to help people deal with psychological injuries. The same is true for the RCMP which has put together a litany of programs to safeguard and strengthen officers mental health.  

Research is being done to get a better picture of how many officers in Canada are dealing with psychological injuries. 

Nick Carleton is a psychology professor at the University of Regina. He and a team of researchers recently conducted a survey, not yet released, trying to gauge how many public safety personnel may have mental health injuries.

“Our public safety personnel are keeping us safe, quite literally. We’ve asked them to do a tremendous job and I think it behooves us in making that request to make sure that we are then supporting them with respect to their mental and physical health needs so they can continue to support and protect all of the rest of us.”